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It's easy to criticize from the cheap seats. I think the answers on this page don't understand the nature and challenges of organizational leadership. Great leadership is almost never about pitching a perfect game. Great leaders make mistakes and have setbacks, but learn from them and recover. There are very few CEOs in Silicon Valley who have had a near-perfect record. And most of them are founders: Jeff Bezos (founder), John Chambers, Larry Ellison (founder), Bill Gates (founder), Andy Grove (almost founder). Maybe a few others. And even these guys each had setbacks. ''It's important to understand that conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley among most senior operators and investors is that Meg Whitman did a very good job running eBay. '' Whitman leadership: overall 10-year performance Over a 10-year period: *Whitman was the CEO who led and scaled eBay, working with founders who weren't interested in day-to-day operations. Contrast this with other companies (Google, LinkedIn, Yahoo) where the CEO was part of a leadership team that included engaged founder(s). Whitman was really in charge and should get a ton of credit for the company's success. *Whitman drove eBay's stock price from ~$2 per share to the low-$20s -> i.e., building a ~$30 billion market cap company. I see Meg Whitman's tenure lined up against the 2008-2012 stock price graph in 3 steps: (1) She left eBay in January 2008, when the stock price was about $30; (2) the market crashed in late 2008 and in 2009 eBay bottomed at about $10 per share; (3) in 2010, eBay recovered to the low/mid-20s. *She drove huge revenue and profits growth during this period. *She drove eBay's acquisition of PayPal in 2002, which is arguably eBay's crown jewel business today. In hindsight, this deal looks like a no-brainer (in fact, it looks like one of the best acquisitions in U.S. corporate history); but, according to my sources, the deal was controversial when it happened; in fact, Howard Shultz resigned from the Board because he was against it. In summary: eBay paid $1.5B for PayPal and now it is worth $25-30B. *She handpicked a successor (John Donahoe) who has apparently done a very good job and has doubled the stock price (now $50+ per share). *She made one clear M&A mistake (Skype), which was a huge distraction but still resulted in a net gain to eBay when it was sold. Whitman eBay leadership: early days Whitman was critical to eBay's early success. I'm close to a number of people who were early employees at eBay; for example, I was close for some time with Rajiv Dutta, who served multiple roles including CFO, GM of Skype, and GM of PayPal. My sources shared some interesting insights with me about the company's early years: *Whitman joined eBay when there were only 30 employees, when it was largely a Beanie Baby/collectibles community. *Whitman was the leader who drove eBay to expand across verticals. She studied eBay's early, fanatical consumers, and those customers convinced her that that eBay could be a real platform. Whitman believed strongly that eBay could grow bigger than collectibles, but many investors, even at the IPO, doubted that. *"Before Whitman, 6 other CEO candidates (and many VCs) turned eBay down because they did not see the company's strategic opportunity." *Whitman was integral to attracting eBay's early tech talent, and her leadership was instrumental to scaling eBay as a platform. *eBay crashed in 1999 and she gets credit for saving it. "Pierre had largely checked out at that point, so Whitman had to run everything on her own and bring in the talent." *One of the boldest things Whitman did which no CEO had done to-date was to set a 3-year revenue target for the street. "In 2001 eBay went out with a target of $3B in revenues by 2004 and then, 3 years later, they beat the target. Mary Meeker had been on record at the time saying that Meg was crazy to do this, that it was CEO suicide. It was incredibly bold, incredibly galvanizing and eBay beat it! It worked." It is extremely difficult to succeed as the CEO of a huge company in Silicon Valley when you are not the founder and not an engineer. Meg Whitman is one of the few exceptions. To be clear, yes, Whitman made mistakes and had weaknesses; she wasn't as strong a technology leader as Jeff Bezos or Eric Schmidt. So, yes, I agree with the core critique that is popular -> had she been more focused on product and technology, Meg Whitman could have built an even bigger business out of eBay (and PayPal) and competed more effectively with Jeff Bezos and Amazon. But... she still built a $30B business with a market cap today of $60+B! Over a 15-year period (including giving her some credit for the Donahoe succession), Meg Whitman did a better job running eBay than just about any bigtime professional CEO in Silicon Valley consumer categories. Ballmer, Koogle, Bartz, Semel, Sculley, Amelio, Dan Nye -- who do you like better than Meg Whitman? Dick Costolo, Dave Goldberg, and Jeff Weiner have a shot at the "most successful consumer professional CEO ever," but as of right now it feels like Whitman would still have the title. To be clear, I don't buy the "right place right time" / "she just found a rocketship and got lucky" arguments. Executing 20-50+% annual growth year after year is not easy, even if it appears that way in retrospect to outsiders. Meg built a great team at eBay and they loved her. The people I know who worked at eBay loved Meg Whitman and viewed her as a very strong leader. Final notes on Meg criticism: *I worry that some criticism of Meg Whitman is a bit misogynistic. There haven't been very many bigtime women CEOs in Silicon Valley, and Meg Whitman is among the most successful. I feel like the "you got lucky" arguments wouldn't be made about men. *I don't understand why people keep mentioning Whitman and Carly Fiorina together. What is similar about them other than they are both women? This seems like subtle (or maybe not subtle) bias against women. *I also think Meg Whitman isn't popular because she's a Republican, and most people in Silicon Valley are hard-core Democrats.